are we going to have to throw out 240 million PCS next year when Windows 10
reaches end of life according to one It analytics firm that's how many computers
are ineligible for a Windows 11 upgrade meaning they won't be getting security
updates after October 2025 and while it's possible to pay Microsoft for
extended security updates Slovenian company Acro security thinks it has a
better and cheaper solution they call it zero patch and it's supposed to keep
Windows 10 safe to use for at least 5 years Beyond October 2025 but how is it
different from Microsoft's official Solutions what are strengths and weaknesses and how the heck does an
outside company even figure out how to patch Windows security holes I mean it's
not like Microsoft just leaves Windows source code laying around for anyone to
look at before we go on I just want to say we're not affiliated or paid by
acros in any way this is just cool information it turns out that not having
the source code isn't a big deal for software Engineers who are good at
reverse engineering once a vulnerability in Windows has been identified and
Engineers can reproduce it they can track exactly how that data flows
between different processes running on the PC and they can examine the code
that's being executed using software tools after this tracking and inspection
step the team then attempts to modify the original Windows code more on that
shortly to plug the security hole although new vulnerabilities are found
regularly with Windows many of them fall into known categories allowing zero
patch to get fixes out the door in relatively short order but there's
something about these fixes that is very interesting compared to official Windows
patches and we'll tell you what that is right after we thank private internet
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special deal with a risk-free 30-day money back guarantee so what clever way
has zero patch device to keep Windows updated instead of altering the original
Windows system files that live on a drive zero patch instead Alters
processes running in RAM across says
this has a big Advantage if a patch that affects a running process for example a
spreadsheet program is released the patch gets applied without the user
having to reboot the PC or close the spreadsheet they're working on instead
zero patch briefly stops the process and Alters a few bytes in memory which only
takes a fraction of a second additionally attempting to alter Windows
files would make the operating system think that there's a security issue and
it wouldn't exactly be convenient to have your computer constantly think it
has some kind of malware infection ironically caused by security patches so
avoiding this approach altogether minimizes the chances that Windows would
somehow how block the security fix is and if for some reason a patch messes
something up or otherwise it needs to be unapplied de applied this can be very
easily done simply by disabling zero patch which instantly removes any
changes from memory without having to go through the process of deinstalling and
update uninstalling but beyond these
usability advantages across says zero patch is superior for certain
vulnerabilities that Microsoft hasn't even addressed yet that is zero day
attacks including for example security holes in authentication for large
networks which Microsoft actually just stopped issuing patches for the point
here is that not only is zero patch a solution to keep Windows 10 safe to use
but the approach is also supposed to help with existing problems Microsoft
either can't or won't fix indeed across
has said that trying to fix the source code is much more timec consuming than
zero patches handle it in RAM approach meaning they're actually supposed to
push out patches faster than you'd used to be getting from Windows update
butless we sound like we're Shilling for them again this was not a p video we
have no affiliation with acros let's now talk about a key limitation to their
solution unlike official Microsoft fixes zero patch can't touch problems in the
kernel basically the underlying code of the operating system instead it'll patch
issues in user space essentially the programs you can see running in task
manager but the good news is that most
critical issues that attackers could exploit are in user space so acros is
pretty confident that zero patch will prevent Windows 10 from becoming
unacceptably risky to use as the years go by still it's important to note that
zero patch tends to focus on specific attack vectors meaning that despite its
advantages it may not protect against the same range of attacks that the
official Microsoft updates would if you want to give zero patch a try Acro told
us that they're looking at extending support Beyond 5 years if demand is
there but again the service is not free though it is nice for Microsoft to have
a little competition are you planning to make your Windows 10 system last for as
long as it can let us know down in the comments and if you'd like to learn a
bit of history about how Windows XP lasted as long as it did go watch this
video next